The same headband she’d been wearing when—when. Jules dashed that thought away and turned to the next one. Had a fox just given her the headband? Wait, a fox? Could that have just happened? And if it had happened, where had the fox gotten it? Her mother’s headband, the blue one with the yellow buttercups embroidered on it. The same headband that Sylvie had worn the day she disappeared. Liz Redding’s horrible question came back in that moment. No sign of the body? Because this was a sign of the body, wasn’t it? Sylvie had been wearing this when she fell into the Slip. This was a part of Sylvie, come back. Jules’s thoughts were all jumbled up. Had that little fox really been standing there just now? Had it really dropped the headband right in front of her? Why wasn’t the fox afraid of her—was it rabid? No, it wasn’t rabid. It was a fox who had come to give her a gift. No, foxes didn’t give gifts. Foxes weren’t human. Foxes were afraid of humans. They avoided them. None of this made any sense.
