Cheshire Cat grin on a thigh

Her name was Bette Garrow, and she kept the mill at the lower ford when the water still ran blue with chalk. One November she went out after a lost nanny goat and found the creature sitting on a stump, grey as wet ash, its eyes the colour of the pond in July. It didn't hiss. It just opened its mouth until she could count every tooth, and it said, "You'll want the way home. I'll want to know what you'd give for it."

Bette was a practical woman, so she offered the goat. The cat laughed, a sound like a cart rattling over planks, and said the goat was already home, thank you. What it wanted was a name. Not any name. The one her mother had called her before the mill and the ford and the husband who drowned in the spring flood. Bette thought about it for the length of one breath, then said she'd rather keep it, and the cat's grin grew so wide it seemed to take up half the sky. "Then keep it," it said, "and I'll keep the path."

She walked out of that wood at dawn, and the goat was bleating at the gate. Ever after, though, Bette could never quite remember her mother's face. Some mornings, if you go down to the ford with the mist low, you'll see a grin hanging in the reeds, teal-eyed and patient, waiting for someone who thinks they know their own name.