At the chalet, there was a portrait of Jean-Baptist that Fanchon had painted. In it, he was a middle-aged man made of solid squares and proud lines. He was wide-shouldered and had clear blue eyes and no hint of a smile on his lips.

The thing standing between Cocot and the fountain was a monster. Deep creases lined his face and around his eyes. Where his mouth and nose should have been were only wrinkles of loose skin.

The absurd thought that he couldn't breathe since he didn't have a mouth or nose passed through her head, and Cocot shuddered.

There was a rope tied around his waist. As Cocot stared, an emaciated arm and hand came out of the wooden chest on the ground and plucked at the rope. The arm was impossibly long and thin. A head came up to the hole in the top of the box, exposing part of face.

Jean-Baptist again, but this one had no eyes, only flaps of skin. The thing in the box seemed to search for Cocot, nose sniffing and mouth wide open. It stretched its hand outward.

There were two of them. The ghost body split in two—one that walked and dragged the chest, the other that was always folded into it.

"Open the...door," he pleaded. A tiny scratching sound came from the chest, like fingernails.

"I need the moonlight," she answered mechanically. Grasping the brambles tighter, she said, "All of it!" The light swirled faster around her into the branches.

The world went black.

Cocot leapt forward, ducking away from where she had last seen the two Jean-Baptists. Reaching the fountain, she thrust the bramble-blade in the water, cutting downward.

"Let the light return!"

Beams of white and silver flooded the basin. They escaped the fountain and filled the space under the roof. They curled out and upwards until they began climbing for the sky, back towards the stars and blackened moon.

"You cannot destroy it," the witch said. Cocot faced the haggard creature who tried to grab her.

"I will make you a promise," Cocot said. She had to circle the basin backwards, away from Jean-Baptist. "I promise you this, Hélène. I will do to you exactly what you did to me. I promise to destroy everyone and everything you love, but no living creature will harm a hair on your head and you will be free to walk away."

"No," she moaned. "No, you cannot destroy it, no fairy has that power, you don't have that power. I will be free to come for it again."

"Maybe I don't have the power," Cocot said. She grabbed the ends of the brambles with both hands. "Or maybe I do. To the surface, to me, to the stars."

A thin white band of light brighter than the moonlight streamed up from the crack to join the rays returning to the heavens.

"Not all of it, you can't!" the witch said.

Cocot turned to tell her she could. Jean-Baptist caught her by the neck. She choked and clawed at his vaporous hand, dropping the brambles in the water. The light began to fade.

"Are you the man they call Jean-Baptist?" a sweet voice asked.

The hand released Cocot's neck. She gasped for air. "Mother?"

A figure in a red dress with a white underdress and thick braid over one shoulder was standing in the pale light at the fountain's edge.

"Mother!"

"No, not you, not now," hissed the witch. "I did not give you leave to speak. I summoned you and now I banish you!" She spat on the ground.

Fanchon did not glance at her. She stared at Jean-Baptist, the ghost with no nose or mouth. She couldn't see the one in the chest. "Are you the cabinet maker and wood worker? The one they call Jean-Baptist?"

The ghost shook violently, unable to speak. Cocot felt something grab at her leg. The thin ghost in the box. "Open the...door, open the door," he gasped.

Cocot saw the chest he was in must have been one he had made long ago and that her mother had painted.

"Keep all of my keys, even the ones which do not open anything," her mother said, still staring at the standing Jean-Baptist.

Her mother was made of memories, a ghost of memories.

The keys that went to no locks at the chalet!

Cocot crouched next to the chest and pulled the keys from her pocket. One was the same green copper as the lock.

"The pain is endless, the darkness is endless," the blind Jean-Baptist whispered.

"No, please," the witch begged. "Don't take him from me. I can't bear to lose him again."

"You trapped him in the chalet. You did this to him," Cocot accused her. "He isn't yours to keep, and I made you a promise."

She placed the solid key in the ethereal lock. She turned it and heard the softest click.

The blind Jean-Baptist pushed open the lid to the chest and it dissolved into nothingness. He unwound his folded legs and one arm that pressed against his body and reached for the standing Jean-Baptist. As soon as he touched him, the standing ghost began to struggle and writhe. The blind ghost's cavernous mouth widened, starved and he began to devour the larger ghost.

Cocot whimpered and looked away, not wanting to watch the gruesome sight.

The struggled stopped. A man's rasping voice whispered, "I am the woodworker called Jean-Baptist."

With a start, Cocot glanced up. Only one Jean-Baptist remained—young and handsome like in the painting, but the faintest smile graced his face as he stared across the fountain.

"I've been waiting for you," Fanchon said.

"What is your name?" Jean-Baptist asked.

Instead of answering, Fanchon faltered, then fell forward. Jean-Baptist caught her before she hit the ground. "Fanchon. I've been waiting for you."

The witch's sharp fingernails dug painfully in Cocot's arm. "You cannot drain it all and I will come for it again. I will make you suffer for this."

"I've been waiting for you here," Fanchon said. "Always leave some raspberry brambles high for the moonlight."

Cocot tore her arm free from the witch and gathered up the raspberry branches from where they were floating. "Light up the path to the stars."

The pale glow burst into a flood of light. Cocot lifted the brambles. One last spell.

"To me, to the light, to the stars; every last drop of evil, I give you your freedom."

The ground trembled ever so slightly and then the crack at the bottom of the basin widened. Scintillating strings of evil poured up and out of it, climbing the moonlight and escaping to the heavens.

Fanchon took Jean-Baptist's hand and she nodded at him. "I will be yours and you will be mine. Something was terribly wrong with the fountain. But I fixed it. I fixed it with magic. I fixed it with love." She put her other hand in the beams of light shooting out of the basin and it washed over them until there was nothing left.

"Oh, Mother, you were here all along," Cocot said, understanding that her mother was truly gone. "You had stayed in my heart, trying to help me."

The witch collapsed. "She didn't love you. Coquelicot, I would be your mother, I would stay with you. You don't want to be alone again, and neither do I."

The bottle of Hector's tincture was on the ground at Cocot's feet. She picked it up. "I have a gift for you. I will cure you of your hatred and the evil in your heart. And just as I promised, I will destroy everything you love."

"No fairy creature can set the evil free. You cannot change me."

"But I'm not a fairy. I am a poppy flower from the field."

She tipped the witch's head back. Two drops of Hector's tincture fell in her mouth and the witch closed her eyes and grew limp. Cocot laid her on the cobblestones.

The last few lines of evil swirled upwards and away with the fading moonlight. High above, the moon was finally becoming white and silver.

As soon as it was free, the evil had destroyed what it loved the most—itself—by changing into what it hated the most—the light in the darkness.

Cocot gently turned Daniel over, sobbing in relief to see that he was breathing. She took him in her arms and placed the last few drops of tincture in his mouth. She staunched the wound on his forehead and waited, knowing that when he woke he would be cured of evil and magic. Including Soufflé's spell that allowed him to see her.

As her fear and anger faded with the last of the moonlight and wisps of evil, the pain in her cheek from where the witch had cut her became a scorching agony. She stopped crying because it made the pain worse, she closed her eyes since it hurt more to blink, but she did not sleep.

Around the village, the night was quiet. A few birds called, a fox barked and a dog replied, and the wind whistled softly through the roof eaves and surrounding fields.

Cocot would have hummed to pass the time, but even the vibrations made the cut on her cheek hurt more.

Soufflé stayed with her; near but not too close. He was silent and still.

When the church on the hill rang midnight, a scuffling in the square startled her.

Six creatures were standing in a circle around the fountain and sleeping fairies. A gasp of fear escaped Cocot's throat.

"They are Moss folk," Soufflé said. She blinked in confusion. "Don't be afraid, they won't hurt you. They hide in the woods. They've come to watch over you and the fairies from under the hill"

Cocot couldn't reply. Not between the pain in her cheek and the hurt the hand fairy had caused by betraying her. The six creatures stood about seven feet tall and they dripped with moss cloaks, bits of lichen and fungus and she saw one had hands like the ends of tree branches. They were the same as the creature in the forest with the whitened mask.

She must have dozed off a while without realizing it, because she woke with a start when something touched her aching cheek. One of the Moss folk stood over her and caressed her cheek with moss that smelled of pines, springtime and loam. Then it offered her something to eat.

"Willow bark," Soufflé explained. "For the pain."

The pain was already fading, but she accepted the bark anyway, grimacing at the bitter taste. The creature wiped the ugly scratches on Daniel's face and the purple gash on his forehead. The wounds began to heal immediately. After that, Cocot slept dreamless and weightless until a rooster's crowing woke her.

The sky was dark blue with a sprinkling of stars to the west. A cow was lowing mournfully in one of the barns and a few lights were on in the village windows.

The Moss folk watched as she glanced around then bowed, their moss spreading out as though alive around them. Captain Thraidox, several guards and the court magician shook themselves awake and turned towards Cocot, weapons drawn.

*** The Moss folk came as soon as the evil was banished. ***