Jolene

by Mercedes Lackey

  Finally, she called down to her aunt. “Aunt Jinny? This here book says Great-Granpappy got the critters t’larn him languages.”

  “Iffen he says so, then thet’s what they c’n do,” her aunt replied, not looking up from the careful lattice-work she was weaving on top of what looked like a rhubarb pie.

  Pie! Her mouth watered, and for a moment she was distracted. Then she recalled herself. “Wall, how does I do thet?”

  “Arst ’em,” came the short answer. She waited a moment, but when nothing more was forthcoming, she turned to the mud-man. “C’n y’all larn me Cherokee?” she asked, hopefully.

  The mud-man put his head to one side, and mimed sleeping.

  “I gots t’be asleep?” She wasn’t entirely certain she wanted any of these critters near her while she was sleeping and unable to keep a wary eye on them. On the other hand—knowing Cherokee could be really useful.

  The creature nodded. She sighed, but made up her mind. “Wall, will y’all larn me Cherokee?”

  She had expected some sort of bargaining session to ensue. She wasn’t sure what she had that she could bargain with, but she certainly did not expect to get her wish for free.

  But the little man just bobbed his head yes, without any more prompting on her part. She waited, but the subject seemed to be closed. She went back to the book.

  Her aunt startled her by reaching up to where she was curled up and slapping her knee. “Y’all c’n come outa thet book now,” she said, amused. “Dinnertime. Pie fer arter.”

  Well, she didn’t have to be invited twice! She closed the book, marking her place with the strip of embroidered ribbon she had found in it. She wished she had more of it, to decorate the bottom of a skirt and the cuffs of a waist—though then she’d have been afraid to wear either for fear of spoiling them. She climbed down and put the book up on the shelf before setting the table for dinner.

  Still, her mind was back in that book even as she ate. Great-Granpappy Pavel had been seriously alarmed when the only “Earth Master” he could find was what he called a “boyar,” a title he had mentioned before, and obviously was someone very important and very rich—the same kind of person who had burned down his village and destroyed the crops to make a hunting preserve out of the area. He had been even more alarmed to awaken the next day—the Hungarian language fortunately well implanted in his mind—to find himself surrounded by the boyar’s men. He had been certain he was about to be ushered into a prison.

  But instead, he was escorted to a house of the sort that surely only a President could live in! Rooms and rooms and rooms, furnishings that, despite Pavel’s careful descriptions, she could not quite wrap her mind around. And to his shock—but eventual delight—he found himself welcomed as a guest and an equal. His shabby clothing was all replaced “in the Hungarian style,” whatever that meant, he was feasted and given his own room as big as this cabin with a soft, soft bed in it of the like she had never heard. She had just begun the next part, where he’d recovered from the journey so far and his host was asking him what his intentions were, when Aunt Jinny interrupted her for dinner.

  “I reckon today we’ll get inter th’ last’a the close in thet chest, hev a look in ’nother place I might’a stashed a thing or two, then reckon what I’m a-gonna need fer when y’all get a liddle more meat on your bones,” Jinny said, dishing out a slice of pie with scarlet juice running out of it. “Then next time Matt goes inter Ducktown, I c’n go with ’im an’ git what we’ll need.”

  Anna wanted to just inhale that pie at the first bite, but she went slowly, carefully savoring every bite—because it was obvious at this point that Aunt Jinny didn’t use a lot of wheat flour, preferring to make baked goods with the corn meal she herself could raise. So when she did make something with wheat flour, it was a special occasion.

  “C’n I go with?” she asked timidly, expecting the usual answer. But this time, Aunt Jinny paused.

  “We’ll see,” she said, surprising the heck out of Anna. “Y’all took t’ usin’ th’ Glory faster nor I’d’a thunk. An’ y’all hev it powerful strong. So . . . mebbe. Iffen y’all hev larned how t’ pertec’ yoreself. We’ll be a-crossin’ thet thar bridge when we gits to’t.”

  Well that actually drove all thoughts of the book out of her head for a moment. She might finally get to see Ducktown, and see for herself if it really was the hellscape her aunt described. And she’d get to go to at least one store! And they’d be getting cloth—or at least flour or chicken feed in matching flour or feed sacks—to make her something new!

  “Y’all’s gonna need a wool skirt fer winter,” her aunt continued. “They don’ put up flour an’ feed in wool. Wool coat, too. An’ wool stockin’s. Ain’t a-gonna hev y’all freeze, an’ a shawl ain’t gonna be enuff.”

  That—sounded alarming, to someone who was used to not having so much as a rag to spare. “Won’t thet be dreadful dear?” she asked timidly.

  “Y’all’s a-gonna be wearin’ thet there skirt fer a long time,” her aunt pointed out. “Twenny years, iffen y’all takes good care, don’ let th’ moths git to’t, an’ don’t tear it up.”

  But her eyes filled with tears when she realized how much this was going to cost Aunt Jinny. “But—all I done since I come here is et up y’all’s food an’ use up yore Ma’s close—” she choked. “I don’ know how ter—”

  “Oh, hush,” Jinny cut her off brusquely. “Yer my kin. An’ what else’m I a-gonna spend money on? Y’all pulls yore own weight now, an’ I’m a-spectin’ y’all ter take care’a me when I’m old an’ jest sit ’round an’ complain!”

  “I’ll do thet!” she pledged. “I promise!”

  “I’ll hold y’all t’thet,” Jinny replied. “Now le’s clean up.”

  “I c’n knit,” she offered, as she dried dishes. “I c’n make m’own stockin’s.”

  “Good, tha’s somethin’ y’all c’n make a start on now.” Aunt Jinny nodded. “All th’ more reason ter go ter Ducktown. Iffen we go when Matt’s takin’ his wagon home with room t’spare, he won’t mind if we brung back a bit more than I usually does. So, wool fer a skirt an’ a coat, an’ wool yarn fer stockin’s. What’d y’all do ’bout shoon an’ stockin’s afore this?”

  “Ma wrapped m’feet in rags,” she confessed. “An’ I didn’ go out, so I didn’ need shoon.” She sighed. “’Cept fer th’ Methodist Christmas Party. Then Ma wore Pa’s broke shoon, an’ I wore hers.”

  She didn’t mention that going to that party was an absolute must for her and Ma. The Methodists had a “draw” for a turkey and other good things—though how they reconciled that with the admonition against gambling she had never been able to reckon—and gave food presents outright to families. They always came home full of a good dinner and with something for the pantry, and once they’d even gotten the turkey! It had lasted them for weeks, with every little bit of it used, even the bones, ground up between two stones patiently by her Ma and used to thicken the soup. And there were the stockings with sweets in them for the chillen—first, that was a free stocking, one that could be unraveled and knitted into a new, short pair for Ma, and second, all but one or two of the sweets got turned back into sugar-syrup to drizzle on Pa’s bread and pancakes.

  Aunt Jinny made a disapproving noise. “Pa must be spinnin’ in his grave, that a gran-chile of his does wi’out stockings and shoon i’ the winter! I’m surprised he ain’t a-hauntin’ me . . . though, come ter think on it, he’d rightly be hauntin’ Lew Jones.”

  But she looked so unhappy that Anna felt moved to pat her arm awkwardly. “I’m here now, Aunt Jinny. An’ yore a-makin’ me shoon, an’ a-getting me new close, an’ I’m a-gonna be able t’knit stockin’s. Ev’thin’s good.”

  But Jinny just sighed. “I wisht thet Lew’d give yer Ma a reason t’leave ’im. Three on us c’d live good here. But he ain’t a-gonna, ’cause who else’d he git t’do fer ’im? He ain’
t a handsome young buck no more, an’ he got Miner’s Cough.”

  Anna sighed too, because she couldn’t imagine anything making her Ma leave Pa, and because she couldn’t think of any way to make their lives better. Pa already had a problem with Aunt Jinny sending potions to sell on. If they sent Ma anything like a parcel of food directly, and he found out about it, he’d probably throw it in the street.

  “Wall . . . le’s go see what yarn I got left, an’ what’s left of my Ma’s ol’ close. Seems I ’member a wool skirt, an’ iffen I does—” she winked at Anna “—tha’s one thing I ain’t a-gonna have t’spend on.”

  But she didn’t go to the old clothes chest. Instead, she went to another, a bigger, blanket chest, half-hidden under piles of clean sheets they’d washed just yesterday. She opened it up to the heady smell of cedar.

  Out came woolen blankets that made Anna’s eyes widen. There would be warm sleeping this winter for sure! And there, at the bottom—those folds of blue—those were no blanket!

  Out came not only a blue skirt, but a brown wool dress, both with the sorts of voluminous skirts that required hoops. “Wall now,” Aunt Jinny said with satisfaction. “I thunk I recollected that I niver cut these up fer rag rugs on account’a them bein’ too good! Even arter y’all fatten up, they’s plenty’a cloth here t’put new waistbands on, an’ plenty left over fer—well, mebbe another whole skirt!” She caressed the wool dress. “This here’s somethin’ called alpaca. ’Twere purdy dear, but ’twas her weddin’ dress, an arter thet, her Sunday best.”

  Tentatively, Anna touched it; it was softer than anything she’d ever touched before, except maybe rabbit fur.

  “Now le’s check th’ bottom’f th’ other chest, under th’ spare sheets,” Aunt Jinny said, loading her down with the skirt and dress. “I’m a-thinkin’ we c’n hev us a liddle sewin’ bee t’day. Git thangs cut out, anyways.”

  Underneath the spare sheets was another treasure. Another voluminous skirt, and not one made out of flour sack or canvas. It was a nice faded pink cotton that you wouldn’t know was faded unless you looked closely at the seams. It even had a touch of rose ribbon trim around the hem. They grinned at each other over its folds.

  By the time supper came around, they had three skirts cut out, extra waistbands for both, and a nice pile of pieces much too big to be called “scraps.”

  “I do think,” Aunt Jinny said, surveying the wool pieces critically, “I do think, iffen y’all don’ mind ’bout a bit’f patchwork, I c’n git that there wool coat outa what we got left. I c’n line it with fur, I’ll bet. I got plenty’f rabbit, or I c’n arst the Ravens what they got t’trade. Beaver ’r otter’d be good.”

  “Aunt Jinny, thet’d be fine!” Anna beamed. “It’d be like bein’ a-wrapped up in my kinfolk!”

  “Why, so it would,” her aunt agreed with a huge smile, politely ignoring the fact that Anna was actually not blood-kin at all to Jinny’s Ma. “An’ it shore is better’n leavin these thangs in them chests, where they ain’t doin’ nobody no good.” She took the remaining lengths of wool and cotton and stowed them back in the blanket chest, then laid the cut-out pieces in the linen chest, layering them with lavender. “Thet’ll do fer now. We c’n start a-sewin’ when we got time an’ they’s light t’see by.”

  Anna was disappointed not to be working on that pretty cotton—but the storm hadn’t blown over yet, and it was getting dark enough to make it hard to thread a needle.

  “Le’s hev supper, an’ y’all c’n pop up on th’ stove an’ read a spell,” Jinny said.

  Back up on the stove, Anna continued where she had left off.

  On hearing that all I wanted was to be a farmer again, my host shook his head. “There is no land here that is not in someone’s hands,” he said, “And while I would welcome you, I do not think you ever want to have anyone as lord over you again. Go to the New World, my friend. There is land for the taking there. And I will help you. This is why.”

  Now came a part that Anna had to read carefully, then read over again, before she properly understood it. It seemed that from Hungary westward, magicians—the ones that weren’t bad, that is—organized themselves into something called “Lodges.” Which didn’t make any sense to Anna, because the only “Lodges” she knew about were places beavers lived . . . so eventually she just decided to try to stop making it make sense and just accept that was what they were called. And these “Lodges” were for the purpose of hunting down bad magicians and stopping them.

  And the rich man wanted Great-Granpappy Pavel to organize one of these “Lodges” in the New World—that is, America. And if there were no good magicians in America yet to make up a “Lodge,” to pass that information down to his descendants so that they could. In return, the rich man promised him money enough to get to America and set himself up when he got there, and the connections among all the “Lodges” he knew to make the trip as easy as it possibly could be.

  It seemed like something he would never have dared to dream of to Pavel, and so he agreed.

  “I swan, I called y’all three times now,” Aunt Jinny said, poking her foot to get her attention. “Y’all done got swallered up by thet book.”

  She didn’t want to put it up—who knew when she’d be able to get back to it?—but she knew Aunt Jinny was not going to let a candle burn for much longer. Reluctantly, she put the book up and climbed up to the loft, to find that little mud-man waiting on the edge of the box that held her featherbed.

  It nodded at her solemnly. She nodded back to it, and looked up at the rafters.

  There were dozens of the little critters up there, all gazing back down at her, eyes shining.

  She didn’t feel any different when she woke up the next day. The mud man was gone, as was the line of observers, and she had actually awakened before her aunt did, because there was no one stirring below. So she took her time about carefully brushing out her hair, braiding it, and putting it up with her precious hairpins.

  She actually had the leisure to think and wonder about a lot of things before her aunt woke up and she climbed down the ladder to wash her face and get dressed. Her aunt was a very good seamstress, as evidenced by her skill at unpicking everything in those three garments yesterday, rather than just ripping the seams apart—and by the careful way she had measured Anna, cutting the six waistbands—three for now, three for later, when she had “fattened up,” if she ever did. How she had carefully conserved the maximum amount of fabric she could from each of the three garments when cutting the skirts. It seemed a shame that she disdained pretty clothing for herself.

  Wisht I dared to arst her about thet.

  The skirts were all going to be just a bit short, but to be honest that was just practical, and she had ceased to worry about how much ankle she was showing, when it came to not having to scrub her hem every night. Maybe that was all it was—Aunt Jinny didn’t so much disdain pretty things, she just didn’t have any use for anything that wasn’t practical up here in the Holler. She certainly hadn’t chopped off her hair to look like a man’s—it was at least down to her waist when unbound, and she kept it braided and wrapped around her head.

  I wonder if Jolene gave her hairpins too?

  Jolene . . . now there was a subject she longed to know more about. She wasn’t a “proper woman,” although she looked like one. She had a lot of magical power, enough to be able to change her appearance in a heartbeat. And she didn’t talk like anyone Anna had ever heard speaking before. In fact—she talked like Great-Granpappy Pavel wrote.

  She heard her aunt stirring at last, and came down the ladder. “Aunt Jinny, why did Jolene talk so funny?”

  “Because she ain’t from ’round here. An’ it’s rude t’ say some’un talks funny when they don’t talk like y’all.” Her aunt shot her a look from where she was dishing out mush. “Don’t talk trash ’bout someone ’lessen y’all wants someone talkin’ trash ’bout y�
�all. An’ don’t never talk trash ’bout Jolene. She gots ways of findin’ thet sort of thang out.”

  Anna flushed, feeling as if she was five and had had her fingers slapped. “Sorry,” she muttered, as much to the absent Jolene as to her aunt.

  “I want y’all to trot down to th’ Holcrofts arter mornin’ chores an’ find out when young Josh reckons t’ take thet baby angel statchoo t’Ducktown, an’ iffen Matt minds us comin’ along an’ doin’ a mite of shoppin’,” Jinny continued, pouring out the tea, then settling onto her seat. “Since Josh’ll be gettin’ paid his own self, I reckon Matt’ll hev some shoppin’ t’do too, an’ won’t mind us.”

  “Yes’m!” Anna agreed eagerly, any thoughts of Jolene, or even the question of whether or not she had learned Cherokee overnight, driven right out of her head by the prospect of seeing Josh again.

  She didn’t scant on the chores, but to Jinny’s open amusement, she certainly went through them at a brisk pace. With sets of underthings drying nicely on the line, she found herself in the lane down to the Holcrofts’ farm by late morning.

  Without Jinny’s lessons on plants and herbs going on, and since the slope led slightly downhill, she made good time, and it was certainly much less than an hour later when she emerged from the trees and onto the crossroads where the lane met the road and the Holcrofts’ farm appeared on the left.

  Maddie Holcroft and her eldest daughter were out hanging wash on the line. Sue spotted her first, and said something to her mother, who looked around a sheet and waved to her. She waved back and skipped the rest of the way to them.

  “I’d arst if there was somethin’ wrong with Jinny, but y’all don’t look like a gal with a ’mergency on her mind,” said Maddie Holcroft with a smile. “What brung y’all down here this mornin’?”

  “Aunt Jinny wants ter know, iffen when Joshua finishes thet there baby angel an’ y’all take it t’ Ducktown, iffen we c’n beg a ride fer shoppin’, please, Missus Holcroft,” she replied, as the freshly washed laundry flapped in the breeze, mingling the pleasant scent of clean linen with green grass, and the varied scents from the garden.