"Miranda!" Neely jerked his feet away as the mouse plunged under the seat. "Right, you're going around mucking in some hedge-witch's stock-box for what?"

Both the boys looked a little nervous around the bottle. "I don't know," said Simon at last. "She never let us mess with any of her things. Is it a real soul? How did she get it?"

"It is not a real soul," Neely said. "It is not a real anything. It's some glam she's trapped in a bottle. I'm more suspicious of how she employed a glassblower for that many bottles, myself."

The boys bowed their foreheads together. Simon shook his head no. "Not that we saw, no. She got real mad if we messed with things."

"Or talked very much," said Peter. "Or tried to pet the bird or the goats."

The boys exchanged a fearful look. Simon began cautiously, "She said that sometimes people here stole away children while they were asleep--"

Peter piped in. "And then once when we were at the little river, we saw something swimming? And she said that was a water horse that ate people."

"And that there was a lady in a castle that if you even looked at her, she would be able to see you no matter where you went forever."

"And there were drinks that made you see everything funny, and that all the roads turned back around when you weren't looking and if you ran away you'd get lost . . . "

"And trees that follow you about," Simon concluded.

The little mouse wriggled its nose. "Um. Some of those are true," she said. "But it sounds like she was making them scarier than they are. The lady with the mirrors is gone now, so she can't watch anyone. And there is a tree-man, but he's very nice. And people confuse him a lot."

Simon looked confused and a bit relieved. Peter still looked doubtful about the whole matter. "So how did you get turned into a mouse?" he asked.