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stay here. Granny needed her Curious Cure-All, and it was up to me to make it.
    I found Granny’s sturdy gloves, a vial for the pixie venom, a net for catching nymphs, and a jar to hold the wolf fur. I placed all these things in my basket. Milk bleated at each of my movements, clearly concerned with my rush.
    “I’ll be back soon,” I said. “Watch after Granny, will you?”
    Maaaaaaa.
    She said she would.
    I took one last look at Granny. She’d get well. I might get bitten by pixies or eaten by a wolf, but Granny would not die.

CHAPTER FIVE
Curious Cure-All
    The best place to find a pixie on The Mountain was the mines where we used to dig for gold.
    I walked through the ruins of the village, past abandoned houses, the crumbling mill, the vacant square. All of it used to be full of people, loud and bustling, but not anymore. The only sound was the whisper of the wind scattering dust and leaves. We were alone on The Mountain, which was fine by me. Granny was all I needed.
    This mine could hardly be called a mine anymore. Most of the shafts had collapsed, so you couldn’t even walk in them. Abandoned carts and rusty pickaxes were strewn about on the ground. Someone had left a hat. It was caked with dust, and moldy from rain.
    I saw no pixies, probably because there was no gold. Pixies love gold. They sense it from miles away and go crazy whenever they’re near it. These mines used to be crawling with pixies—I used to swat them away like bugs. But now that I wanted to find one, there were none.
    I searched along the sluices, where small children used to scoop up mud in pans and search for specks of gold. Most of the sluice boxes were broken and tipped over. I lifted some pieces off the ground, searching, and finally something colorful and sparkly fluttered beneath one of the boxes. A pixie!
    She was nestled in a nest woven of grass and twigs and flecked with gold. I pulled on my leather gloves and poked at her. She squeaked and flew up to the sky, out of reach. I picked up a bit of her gold. She shrieked and darted back to bite my glove, digging her fangs into the leather. I dropped the gold, and the pixie snatched it and flew away again, this time out of sight. She had left behind a sizable drop of pixie venom. If she had bitten my bare hand, my finger would be as big as a sausage by now. I took the little vial from my apron pocket and squeezed the venom over the rim.
    There! That wasn’t so difficult. One ingredient found. Two to go.

    I walked along my path toward my honey hive, searching for a good nymph tree. Tree nymphs are like pixies, but with twigs for bodies and leaf-wings that change with the seasons—green in the spring and summer, red and orange in the fall, brittle brown in the winter. They’re so well disguised that few know of their existence. Some people swear that trees can speak, but they’re really just hearing the tree nymphs trying to tell them something they forgot. Granny says when we forget something, the tree nymphs sweep up our memories and take care of them until we remember. I must not have forgotten anything important, because I’ve never understood a thing from the tree nymphs. They sound like rustling leaves to me.
    The trick to spotting tree nymphs is to watch the movement of the leaves when a wind comes. When the wind rushes, all the leaves move, of course, but the nymphs will detach from their branches and flutter to other limbs or trees. Through this method I found some nymphs in an enormous beech tree with low-hanging limbs. I shook some of the branches until the nymphs floated down. I swished the net, but they evaded me, and all I caught was regular leaves. I tried again and again, swishing the net as fast as I could, but the nymphs swirled over my head, higher and higher in the tree.
    I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I put the net between my teeth and swung myself up into the tree, snagging my skirt in the process. Cursed skirt! I yanked it free, and it tore all the way