Jolene

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Don’t thee be a-thinkin’ canst be slatternly,” Coby said sternly. “Hob won’t stay! Nor will Domovoy!”

  But Anna had something else in mind than wondering why she and her aunt were doing all their own chores if the Hob and the Domovoy would tend the house and yard—she was wondering why her aunt didn’t rely on them so they could go to church on a Sunday. Surely these creatures would take care of things for a good reason like that!

  It was surely too dark for her aunt to read her expression, but Jinny must have known her well enough to figure out what she was thinking.

  “Billie McDaran,” she said, shortly.

  “Oh!” she said, knowing immediately what Aunt Jinny meant. “Do he go to church?”

  “Dunno,” her aunt said. “Don’t matter. He’d’a seed y’all a-comin’ or a-goin’, no matter what. Ain’t much in Ducktown he don’t know ’bout.”

  She sighed with disappointment, and a little guilt. “It don’t seem right,” she said reluctantly.

  “Fust settlers here didn’ hev no church. Cherokee don’t hev no church,” her aunt pointed out. “By my reckonin’ God don’t give two hoots iffen y’all goes an’ sits in a pew twice on Sunday, long as y’all obeys the Golden Rule.”

  “But wouldn’ it be a brave thang t’face down Billie McDaran an’ go t’ church, like facin’ down th’ Romans?” She actually had only a vague idea what that meant, formed from sermons, but when the preacher had talked about it, it seemed a great thing.

  Aunt Jinny snorted. “Don’t reckon God’d thank y’all was bein’ brave. Reckon He’d thank y’all was bein’ stupid, fer puttin’ yoreself in thet man’s way. An’ it’s not like other folks’d know y’all was doin’ it jest t’git t’church, neither, so y’all wouldn’t even be a good ’xample.”

  “Oh.”

  “’Specially when there’s been plenty of folks that done without goin’ t’church an’ was good, Godly people,” Aunt Jinny persisted. “Hermits don’t go to no church, now, do they? An’ they’re in the Bible as bein’ some of the Godliest of all!”

  She had to admit that was true.

  Her aunt sensed her defeat. “So, no more persterin’ me ’bout goin’ t’church?”

  She sighed even more deeply. “No, ma’am.”

  Her aunt chuckled. “Then I’ll tell y’all what I done decided this arternoon. Iffen y’all git yore chores done, an’ whatever else I arst y’all t’do in the mornin’, y’all c’n hev ev’ry arternoon to yoreself. Git a lesson from Granny Spider, or run all th’ way down t’Holcroft’s farm an’ palaver with Josh an’ his sister, though y’all ain’t foolin’ me, an’ I know it’s Josh yore hankerin’ t’see.”

  She gasped. “Really? Truly?”

  “Ayup,” her aunt agreed. “I reckon cain’t hurt, ’cause Josh ain’t a-gonna take his eyes an’ hands offen his paid work. An’—” She paused. “Wall, niver mind. Jest be back by supper, or I’ll feed it t’the pigs, an’ y’all c’n go ter bed hungry.”

  She felt as if she was going to burst with happiness.

  The moon rose. Coby sat down at her aunt’s feet. The other two critters sat on the steps. The piskie produced a length of thread and laced it on what passed for its fingers. It and the gnome began playing a game of cat’s-cradle. “Is hevin’ Coby an’ th’ Domovoy why y’all don’t got a cat?” Anna finally asked, “cat’s-cradle” having led her wandering mind to “cat” and then to the realization that despite her aunt taking precautions against their depredations, she hadn’t actually seen so much as a trace of a mouse around the cabin or storage areas. “Do they chase off varmints?”

  Coby snorted.

  “Nope. I don’t got a cat, on account’o cats go a-wanderin’ an git thesselves killt, an’ I cain’t go gettin’ fond’o somethin’ an’ have it run off t’git itself killt.” She jerked her head into the house. “Domovoy knows thet, so he runs off th’ varmints what gets inside th’ shield.” She chuckled. “Coby’ll tackle a fox or a weasel, but he’s above chasin’ mice.”

  Coby sniffed.

  “Wouldn’t the shield keep the cat in?” Anna wanted to know. “The way it does the hens?”

  Coby laughed. “Ah, lass, thee don’t know cats, does thee?”

  “Reckon not,” she admitted. “We ain’t niver had one.” On account of we niver had ’nuff food thet there’d be mice fer a cat t’et.

  The night filled with sound. Crickets by the hundred, bullfrogs, small frogs, and the little green tree frogs. The skeeters came around, but Aunt Jinny made a glyph that kept them off, and taught it to Anna, so the skeeters were frustrated and the bats were pleased that the skeeters were now hovering, frustrated, above their targets. That made a little cloud of prey for them, and they sometimes swooped close enough to Anna that she felt the wind from their wings on their way out of a dive.

  With the moon rising above the garden, and everything so pretty and peaceful, Anna couldn’t help but think it would be even nicer if Josh was up here on the porch with her, instead of Aunt Jinny. Maybe sitting close, and holding her hand . . .

  “Aunt Jinny,” she said finally. “Did y’all know Josh Holcroft’s got th’ Glory?”

  She heard her aunt’s nightdress rustle a little as Jinny turned her head. “I did not!” her aunt exclaimed. “How do y’all know thet?”

  “When we went t’ Ducktown,” Anna explained, “there was a piskie an’ a liddle mud-man in th’ wagon-bed. They wanted ter see the liddle angel baby. Josh seed ’em.”

  “Huh,” Jinny said. “Reckon he got much?”

  “Dunno, but iffen he did, wouldn’t Elder Raven know it an’ tell y’all?” Anna pointed out.

  “Reckon yore right.” Jinny seemed to be pondering that for quite some time. “Y’all oughter see how much of th’ Glory he got,” her aunt added, finally. “An’ y’all c’n larn him what I done larned y’all. Jolene’s got one thang right; anyone with th’ Glory’s gotta be taught.”

  Anna decided to ask another question.

  “Aunt Jinny, what’s them liddle rock and stone critters?”

  “Jest Earth Elementals. My Granny said they could be liddle or big, but I’d likely niver see a big ’un, since th’ bigger they gets, the less they wants t’ be anywhere near people.”

  “They also become sleepy, lass,” Coby said. “Sleepy enough that they buries themselves into th’ earth and are mortal hard to rouse.”

  “Innerestin’.” Her aunt chuckled. “See now, thet’s what happens when I get a young’un about what arsts questions. I larns thin’s too.”

  Her aunt seemed content to sit there for the next hour or more, but Anna soon found herself yawning. There was only so much fantasizing about Josh being here beside her that she could manage, particularly with the Hob and her aunt plain as plain in the moonlight. So finally she excused herself, picked up her things, and went back into the cabin to put them away safely and climb the ladder into her bed.

  But she did wonder why her aunt had gone so quiet on learning that Josh had the Glory too.

  14

  THE marble had been delivered and Josh was chiseling out the rough outline of the smaller baby angel when Anna arrived at the Holcrofts’ farm that afternoon. She heard the chink, chink, chink of his hammering almost as soon as the farmhouse was in sight.

  While she had sped through her chores and made quick work of the potion lesson Aunt Jinny had set her, it had not been sloppy or slip shod, and her aunt had acknowledged as much over dinner. “An’ if I’d’a known I could light a fire under yore feet jest by lettin’ y’all see Joshua, I’d’a done it afore this,” she’d laughed teasingly, as Anna blushed. “Jest do the warshin’, an’ off y’all go.”

  Anna had finished the dishes and the day’s washing, hung her things on the line, and practically flown down the lane, marveling at how easy it was to run now, and how long it had been since she’d have been
out of breath from mere walking.

  When she trotted out of the green shade of the lane into the open, the sun hit her with a flash of heat that made her wish she had worn a hat. Neither Maddie Holcroft nor her daughter Sue were in sight when she arrived—and although she didn’t exactly sneak into the barn and the workshop, she didn’t go out of her way to find them, either. She had the feeling that if she did, Maddie would find a way to set Sue as a chaperone, and that would put paid to about half of what she wanted to talk to Josh about.

  So she headed straight for the barn, staying out of visual range of the kitchen door and the kitchen shed. And she was very glad to step back into the relative cool of the shady barn. They must have just brought in a harvest of hay and spread it up in the hayloft, because the building was full of the sweet, dusty scent of it. She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkened interior, then made her way to the rear.

  The windows were open wide to a fresh breeze, and Josh had his back to her. Josh was very much engrossed in his work, and the ringing of hammer on chisel covered the sounds of her footsteps, so she waited patiently until he stopped chiseling off pieces of marble for a moment, wiped his forehead on his sleeve, and turned to get a drink of water from the bucket behind him. That was when he saw her standing there, waiting for him to finish what he was doing.

  “Anna!” he exclaimed, eyes lighting up and generous mouth immediately forming into a grin. “How long y’all been a-standin’ thar?”

  “Not long. I weren’t a-gonna innerupt y’all,” she said, gratified at such a positive reaction to her presence.

  “Didjer aunt send y’all down here?” he asked, offering her the dipper full of water first before draining it himself.

  “Sorta. She tol’ me she’s purt pleased with what I been a-doin’, so as long as I git all m’work done in th’ mornin’ she give me leave t’go do what I want ev’ry arternoon now. An’ I wanted t’come down here.” She didn’t add to see you, because that would have been awfully forward of her, but from the way his grin widened, she got the feeling he understood it.

  “Wall, Cavenel sent th’ marble, like he promised. I got all th’ rotten stuff hacked off, an’ I ’bout got the statchoo roughed in.” He gestured to the ovoid on his workbench, which was just about the size of an actual baby plus the angel wings, so far as she could tell. “It gits more finicky from here. But leastwise, we ain’t a-gonna need a cart t’git this back ter Ducktown. I might could take her m’self ridin’ th’ mule with a saddlebag.”

  There wasn’t much to admire, but she admired it anyway. “Reckon y’all c’n stop fer a liddle bit?” she asked, hopefully.

  He made a show of shaking out his hands and arms. “Reckon I better, or I might start missin’ what I aims t’hit,” he laughed, and set hammer and chisel aside. There were several tall stools here in the workshop; he pulled one out for her to perch on, and dropped himself down atop another. The breeze picked up a bit, and she gathered herself some straw from the floor and started finger-weaving it to make a flat bit she could fan herself with. “Wall, this does give me a chance t’arst y’all iffen y’all really saw them liddle critters in the wagon t’other day.”

  Well that wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear from him—but it was one of the subjects she had determined to talk to him about.

  “Plain as plain,” she assured him, on second thought relieved that he had been the one to broach the subject so quickly. “Tha’s parta why I come down here. See . . . seein’ them thangs . . . it means y’all got magic. Like me, an’ like Aunt Jinny.”

  She waited, a little apprehensively. How was he going to react to that?

  The prospect did not seem to alarm him in the least. He nodded. “I been a-wonderin’ ’bout that. But—I got magic?”

  “It’s th’ on’y way y’all c’n see ’em,” she said. “Aunt Jinny, she says thet’s the fust sign y’all got magic, is seein’ ’em.”

  “Huh.” He scratched the back of his head. “I thunk mebbe they was some kinds o’ hants, mebbe somethin’ Cherokee.”

  “They ain’t hants. Some on ’em’s Cherokee, some ain’t,” she said. “Leastwise thet’s what Aunt Jinny says. When’d y’all fust see ’em?”

  “Started seein’ ’em this spring, when I started workin’ on th’ angel-baby. Figgered at fust I was mebbe lettin’ my ’magination run off, on account’a this’s the fust time I ever done a death-piece fer a chile, but then they started helpin’ me.”

  She blinked. “Helpin’ y’all? How?”

  “Findin’ stuff I’d lose. Or not lose, but drop in th’ straw.” Since the straw underfoot here in the workshop was at least a couple inches deep, she nodded. It would be very easy to lose a small dropped tool in here.

  “I’d drop a chisel or som’thin’, lean over, an’ the liddle critter’d be there, holdin’ it up fer me.” He scratched his head. “I figgered at thet point it weren’t no fever-dream, and weren’t somethin’ I was maunderin’ over. So, what are they?”

  She was only too happy to explain, and he listened intently, nodding from time to time, but didn’t interrupt her. About the Elementals, and magicians. About the magic that her Aunt Jinny called the Glory. About how that was why she was here with her aunt in the first place. About Aunt Jinny and her Great-Granpappy and Great-Granny.

  She hadn’t really thought about how he would react when Aunt Jinny had told her she should tell him all about magic. And it wasn’t until she’d started in on it that it had occurred to her that he might not take it all in stride—

  But he did. In fact, he acted as if this was something he might could have been thinking and wondering about for some time.

  “But they ain’t yore Great-Granpappy an’ Great-Granny, right?” he asked. “’Cause they’s yore Aunt Jinny’s, an’ she ain’t yore Ma, an’ yore Ma’s on’y her half-sister. So how’s come y’all got thet there magic?”

  “Dunno,” she admitted. “I don’t unnerstand a lot of it. I was afeerd there was somethin’ bad ’bout it, on account’a it says in the Bible thet ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch t’live,’ so I arst Jesus fer a sign, an’—” She hesitated. “An’ it seems like Jesus don’ think it’s a bad thang t’hev magic, long as y’all does good with it.”

  “Seems t’me it’s jest another thang folks c’n do,” he observed, looking earnestly into her eyes, as if he was trying to reassure her. “Like havin’ a silver tongue, that’s somethin’ Pa talks ’bout sometimes. It means y’all c’n talk a body inter almost anythin’. Y’all c’n—oh, I dunno. Be a good preacher! Or y’all c’n use it t’swindle folks.” He grinned at her. “I purely cain’t think y’all would ever do nobody no harm, even iffen y’all was mad as hops at ’em.”

  She nodded, amazed and thrilled that he seemed to understand it all and accept it so easily, without even asking for proof. “Reckon yore right. Aunt Jinny uses it t’ stren’then up her potions, so they work better.”

  He flexed his fingers and stood back up. “I’m a-gonna get back t’chippin’, an’ yore welcome to set by me. I prolly won’t talk much, but iffen y’all wanter go on a-talkin’ ’bout this magic stuff, I’ll be a-listenin’ purt hard. This’s jest answerin’ a whole lotta questions I didn’t even know I had.”

  “I don’ mind,” she said, and she didn’t. And for a while, she just sat there and watched him work. It was interesting to watch how he considered the stone before he set the chisel on it, and hit it with the hammer just so, then set to considering again.

  “Yore a-takin’ all this ’bout magic purdy well,” she observed after a while.

  “On account’a I allus knowed magic was out thar,” he said, between chips. “Never reckoned I had it, but figgered someone did. All’a the tales ’bout hants an’ curses, an’ witchery, so many on’em there had t’ be some truth there. An’ ain’t all the stories ’bout bad stuff, neither.” He turned his head slightly to give her a
little grin. “My Granny was jest full of stories afore she passed, an’ she tol’ ’em like they was the gospel truth. Granny niver lied t’me, not once. When somethin’ was jest a story, she come out an’ said so afore she told it. But when she told me ’bout people she knowed with magic, it were jest like she were a-tellin’ me straight up. Now I come t’think of it,” he continued, returning his gaze to the statue, “she had some stories ’bout liddle critters, like we been a-seein’, on’y they was things with wings. An’ most of her stories ’bout magic was about them as can whistle up storms an’ shut ’em down agin. So—reckon thet’d be Air Elementals?”

  Anna considered that. “Dunno what else it’d be,” she admitted. “Ain’t never seed them, an’ Aunt Jinny cain’t whistle up no storms or nothin’, but she says we-uns is got Earth magic, so stands to reason we ain’t gonna see no Air nor Water nor Fire.”

  “Reckon thet’s where I got th’ magic from, then, was Granny.” He took a few more chips. “Though hang if I know why it’d matter where I got it from. Ain’t no cause t’wonder where it come from iffen I got it. Jest gotter figger out how t’use it.”

  “Gotter see it afore y’all c’n use it,” she told him. “I could see the critters afore I could see the magic.”

  “Reckon thet’s where I oughter start, then,” he observed. “An’ right now, tryin’ t’see magic ain’t gonna get no stone cut.”

  “Mebbe it could, but I dunno how,” she admitted. “An’ Aunt Jinny says usually it’s harder t’ do thangs with magic than it is t’do ’em with yore hands.”

  “Durn pity,” he chuckled. “Here I was hopin’ I c’d jest sit back an’ let magic dry th’ dishes an’ muck out the mule when it’s my turn!”

  She laughed at that, picturing the dishes floating in the air, and then laughed even harder, trying to picture the poor little Earth critters trying to juggle dishes that were their own size or bigger.