“Get a shoebox from my closet,” she said. “Take the shoes out first. Then dump everything from the cage into the box.” It was good that she gave exact instructions. I needed them, I couldn’t think. My brain was lit up with shame and excitement both. Poor Snowball. But I had found a deep and secret thing.

I carried the shoebox in one careful hand. Mommy held the other. She pulled me along, not unkindly. “Quickly now,” she said. Out the front door, down the street.

“You didn’t lock it,” I said. “What if someone goes into the house? What if they steal things?”

“Let them,” she said. “Only you and I matter.”

What about Daddy? I thought, but did not say.

When we reached the gate to the woods I pulled back. “I don’t want to go in there.” I started to cry again. “I’m afraid of the trees.” I remembered what had happened with the little wooden cat. What would I be asked to leave behind, today? Maybe Mommy would have to stay and I would be forced to return alone. That was the worst idea.

“You don’t need to be afraid, Teddy,” she said. “You are more frightening than anything that lives in these woods. Besides, you will feel better out of the heat.” She squeezed my hand. In her other hand she held her gardening trowel, the one with the pink handle.

We followed the path, which was a leopard skin of light and shade. She was right, I did feel better here, under the cool trees. I was still sorry, though. The mouse had been so little and I knew that we owe kindness to little things. So I cried again.

We reached a glade lined with boulders and silver trees like bolts of water or light. I knew, as soon as I stepped into that circle, that something would happen here. This was a place of transformation, where the wall between worlds was thin. I could feel it.

Mommy dug a hole with her pink trowel in a patch of sunshine, and we buried what was left of the mouse. The bones were picked clean; they shone almost translucent against the young grass. As the rich earth fell on top of the shoebox, covering it, something happened. I saw that what had been just a mouse was changed. Its remains became precious and powerful. It was part of death and of the earth now. It had become a god.