Soufflé lit a candle and found her huddled on the floor a few minutes later.

"It's all right now. He's calm. The field fairies are trying to clean him and he went over to the side by the woodpile. Your mother's charms are quite effective and you've kept them going perfectly," he said.

Cocot heard his words, but could not pay attention. The door was hard and cold on her spine, but its solidness, its strength comforted her. For the first time in her life, she was grateful to Jean-Baptist. He had built a door and a chalet fit to withstand an attack by a monstrous beast.

But that thing was not Hector.

"What made him do that?" she asked. "Why did he attack me when we reached the stairs?"

"Evil calls to evil."

"He is not evil. Something made him do it; something he saw or heard. Right after Lessoc Village."

"Coquelicot, he is infected with the Huntsman's magic that sends him on the hunt, but even before that he chose to be evil," Soufflé explained.

"And what if he is trying to not be evil any more, and that something else made him attack me?"

"What other fanciful ideas do you have?" he asked.

She sucked in sharply, the bitterness of Hector's betrayal and now Soufflé's heartless words consuming her. "I hate you. I want you to go away."

"Please, Coquelicot. I'm sorry," he said, flitting to the floor to pat her foot. "I know you care for him and that makes it all the worse. This is what I warned you about, though."

"You say he chose evil, but I say something happened to him to make him this way. He didn't choose."

"But he did. That's the crux of it. He saw his opportunity and he drank it down."

"Then how do I get it out? How do I cure him?"

Soufflé shook his head and his wings drooped. "When will you understand there's nothing you can do for that creature, but save yourself from him?"

When Cocot opened the door cautiously the next morning, she found her market goods in an orderly pile on her doorstep. The flour was there, too, clean of all traces of dirt and transferred into a cotton sack.

Well, she would be baking cookies for the Bounet Rodzos, that was certain. She glanced left and right for Hector, and silently picked her way to the woodpile, leaving the door open, just in case. He was not there and she breathed a sigh of relief. Was he gone or in the field? Did she want to find him or was she hoping he had disappeared?

Unable to stop herself, she tiptoed to the field and there she saw him standing among the red poppies and green grasses, nose to the gentle breeze. He was simply a horse once more. He should always be a horse, she decided, and nothing else.

"I'm not going to abandon you, Hector," she told him, approaching softly. "Nor will I let this evil or dark magic take you. You are my horse now, not the Huntsman's, not anyone else's. Mother said there is more power in the field flowers than in any magician's hat. Let's prove her right."

Although she didn't know what she needed, she set about gathering armfuls of flowers, weeds, nettles and grasses from the field and taking them to the chalet. There, she spent most of the day pouring over her mother's cookbook, inside and out, every page, every picture. The answer had to be written on the pages or drawn in the corners; she was going to find it.

Soufflé came that evening with his teacup and asked if he could stay for tea and dinner. She said yes and gave him some crumbs from the batch of cookies she had made for the Bounet Rodzos. He sat on the table, watching her read the book while he drank his tea, neither of them speaking to the other for a half hour or more.

"You have on a lovely new outfit," he said, breaking the silence with his gruff voice.

"Thank you. The pants are old, I rolled the hems high for the nice weather and the shirts are actually ancient. They were Jean-Baptist's Sunday shirts," she said. She had cut one to make a vest, since they were practically see-through, and she had cinched the wrists on the other to make billowing sleeves. The overall effect had a pirate's touch to it which pleased her. Her mother's dress was stuffed deep in the drawer and covered with an extra blanket.

"It looks very nice." He did not mention the horse or the cookbook.

"Soufflé, remember when you put a charm on the inner door to make Jean-Baptist sleep?"

"Hmm."

"Could you put a charm on Hector until I can find a cure for him in the cookbook?" she asked, bringing up the subjects the fairy obviously did not want to discuss.

"Eh-hummmph," he cleared his throat and drank some tea.

"Well? Could you do something for him for a couple of days? I told Daniel I would bring him to the farm to have his shoes changed, but I'm afraid for him to be away from the chalet at night."

"As well you should be."

"I won't give up on him without a fight; you can either help me or not."

"Coquelicot..."

"Yes or no, will you help me?" she asked.

"Only in exchange for a promise. If you cannot cure him within two weeks and three days, when the moon is full, you will lead him to the town and leave him there. If you don't, you will be driven from your chalet."

"How can you ask me such a thing?"

"You don't remember he nearly trampled you to death?"

Two weeks and three days. There were several recipes in the cookbook that needed to age for two weeks, at least one would do the trick. It was enough time. "All right, I promise."

"I will hold you to this agreement," he warned. He traced a symbol in the air—loops and stabbing points that hung like frost for the barest second--and took flight.

She followed him out to the back of the chalet, where Hector was grazing. Soufflé checked the contents of a tiny pouch.

"I don't have much pixie dust left, so I can only try one time." Soufflé took a pinch of dust from the pouch and flew to Hector's head. In the same unruly spot that Cocot like to rub, the fairy touched him and whispered, "Sleep all evil till wakened by the moon's full face."

Hector shook his head and mane, unconcerned with the fairy. Cocot crept up close and saw that the black maggot creatures in his eyes and sores came up in their multitudes for a breath of air then wormed back inside and disappeared. There was a spot of gold pixie dust that sparkled on the horse's forehead.

"Thank you, Soufflé," she said.

But without answering, the hand fairy abruptly flew off to the forest.

All right, then. Time to start making a cure.

There were tincture recipes: one with sage and lavender (and the note about using poppy seeds), and the other calling for marigolds and thyme. And there were also some salves using lanolin and almond oil. One needed chamomile, lavender, garlic and goldenseal to complete it.

She chose a few salves and tinctures that took two weeks to age, and set all her supplies and tools on the table; the measuring droppers, the bottles of alcohol, mortar and pestle, paring knife and the washed flowers and herbs.

There was no room for error nor imagination, except for the addition of poppy seeds to the first tincture recipe. She cut the flowers and herbs carefully, chopping and then pounding into a mixed mash with the pestle. She counted the alcohol drop by drop as per her mother's instructions (there were hundreds of drops). If it had been a game testing her precision, she would have won. As it was not—it was actually the last chance to save Hector from the evil eating him up from inside, she would have to wait another two weeks to try it on him.

Her forehead ached from pinching her eyebrows together by the time she had finished preparing the marigolds and thyme solution, and the first half of the sage and lavender one. Now she had to decide; stick with the original recipe or try to imagine how many poppy seeds to add. Do them both, she thought. She finished up the simple tincture of sage and lavender and set the bottle in the cupboard.

She began to prepare the next solution. There was another problem, though. Besides not knowing the quantities of poppy seeds, she kept thinking of the old woman in the pharmacy; she had told her to use oregano, thyme, marigolds, chamomile, nettles and also the poppy seeds. There were marigolds and thyme in the one tincture already. But what should she do about the other herbs the woman told her to use?

Use them all, she told herself, desperation gripping her. I'll use everything I can in the third tincture, anything and everything that might possibly help him and then if the other two from my mother don't work, I'll have one last hope left.

Quantities? She would base them from her mother's notes on the other recipes.

"I'll do it," she whispered to herself, "and let poppy seed dreams carry him safe and sound through the night to a new morning and a new beginning. There will be enough magic in the flowers from the field to save him."

She worked late into the night by the light of three candles, eyes tearing with the strain and head aching. In the end, she had three tinctures, two oil salves and a beeswax balm brewing in the cupboard. They had two weeks and three days to produce a miracle.

*** Cocot isn't giving up on Hector! Below are poppies, or coquelicots in French. ***