Jolene Read online

  “Naw, I wouldn’ do thet t’ the pore liddle critters,” he agreed. “Not even if they’d let me, which they prolly would not.” He worked the stone a while more. “How hard’s it t’larn this stuff, anyways?”

  “Reckon it’s different fer ev’body,” she said, after a moment of consideration.

  “Wall, then, we’ll wait till I needs a liddle rest fer m’hands, an’ y’all c’n see iffen y’all c’n larn me,” he said reasonably. He cast a grin at her over his shoulder. “I dunno why, Anna May, but I kinder feels like I knowed y’all all m’life. Y’all’s plenty easy t’talk to. Like I could tell y’all anythin’, anythin’ a-tall. Like I could trust y’all with anythin’.”

  She got blushing and a little flustered then, in no small part because she felt exactly the same about him, and she couldn’t account for it. She knew why she felt all kinds of other things about him, most of them exciting and fluttery, and not the way she’d ever felt about any boy before. That was just simple to reckon the reasons for. He was the first boy who’d ever paid her a lick of attention, and he was good-looking on top of that, and she knew very well she was spoony about him. She’d been on the outside of that, at those Christmas parties and July Fourth picnics, and Halloween gathers; she’d seen plenty of girls get giggly and goo-goo-eyed over boys, and she recognized some of that in what she was feeling. But there was something deeper there, a sense of connection that wasn’t fluttery and giggly at all. On the contrary, it felt like a deep, slow river, moving at its own pace, but powerful, and something that would endure regardless. “I guess I kinder feel like thet too,” she confessed. “Mebbe it’s on account’a the magic?”

  “Thet don’t seem right.” He shook his head, and took a couple more hammer taps. “Wall, y’all got more sense than m’sis Sue. An’ y’all ain’t as flibberty-gibbet as the gals down in Ducktown. An’ thas a fact. But they’s a lot more to it than that. It ain’t fair t’compare ’em to y’all, cause y’all’s special, and it ain’t jest the magic. I cain’t put it inter words, but it’s like something I know, like I know what m’own hand’ll do when I want it ter do somethin’.” He nodded, as if that settled it. “I know we ain’t knowed each other fer long, Anna May, but I’d admire iffen y’all wouldn’ mind iffen I arst Miz Jinny t’let me court y’all.”

  She felt as if she’d been struck by lightning, and sat there for a moment, gasping like a landed fish.

  In fact, she sat there so silent for so long that he put down his hammer and chisel and turned around to face her, expression one of dismay and concern.

  “Iffen y’all don’ like thet, we c’n jest be friends—” he stammered, for once, obviously, just as flustered as she was.

  “No!” she managed. “I mean, yes! I mean, I mean, I’d really truly like it iffen y’all’d talk to Aunt Jinny!” She became suddenly aware that she had clasped both her hands tightly under her chin as if in prayer, as he grinned again, reached out, took her hands, pried them open, and leaned forward to kiss her chastely on the cheek.

  “Y’all had me plumb skeert there, a minnut,” he said, and picked his hammer and chisel back up again, turning back to his work.

  It was a good thing that he did, because she was utterly speechless for quite some time, her right hand held to her cheek where he had kissed her, almost unable to breathe.

  “So,” he said into the silence, quite as if he hadn’t asked her that incredible question, and hadn’t just kissed her. (Her first kiss from a boy!) “What’s thet magic look like?”

  She managed to gather her scattered wits. “It looks kinder like foxfire,” she said, after long consideration. “’Cept I c’n see it by daylight, an’ it’s a purdy gold, kinda like the way sunlight gets real late afore the sun ac-chully starts t’set. When I look at them liddle critters, I see thet kinda glow a-haloin’ them. And afore I sets the magic loose to do what I done told it to, I kinda gather it inter a glowin’ ball a-twixt my hands. Thet might be the easiest t’show y’all.”

  It was something of a relief to her that after asking if he could court her, he went right back to asking about magic. She had much rather get a chance to get her insides settled down again before he started acting sweet on her; much rather they acted like ordinary friends and not sweethearts, not just yet. It was a big thing to consider!

  And after all, they didn’t have permission to be any such thing as sweethearts yet. He hadn’t asked Aunt Jinny, and while she doubted that his parents would object—they were clearly good friends with her aunt, and on top of that, they knew she was being taught a trade that was respectable for a woman to be in, and would bring in steady income to augment what came from Jinny’s little farm—he still would probably have to get their blessing before he took things any further.

  Don’t count yore chickens, Anna May Jones, she told herself. They’s all kinder thangs that can interfere.

  “All righty then.” He put the chisel and hammer aside, and shook out his hands and arms again. “Is thet somethin’ y’all c’n show me now?”

  “Easy as pie,” she assured him. She half-lidded her eyes and unfocused them, searched around for those rivulets of power, found one running right under this very workshop, and gathered the Glory to herself. She felt more than saw the power coming up her legs and down her arms, into her hands; it felt like a subtle tingling, and her skin felt more alive somehow. It began to collect in her hands. She frowned as she focused her intent on it, and concentrated it into a glowing sphere that hovered between her palms. “It’s thar,” she said, holding her cupped palms out toward him. “See?”

  She fully expected him to exclaim at the sight of it and say “yes.” But he frowned. “Nope,” he replied with obvious disappointment. “Don’t see nothin’.”

  She gathered more of the power, concentrating it further, until it glowed like a little sun, hoping more power would make it easier for him to see, and looked back up at him with expectation. He shook his head. “Still don’t,” he admitted.

  “Mebbe don’t try so hard?” she suggested. “When I kinda stopped tryin’, thet’s when I seed it fust.”

  He closed his eyes and stood there, shaking his hands to get all the cramps and numbness out of them, she supposed. Then he slowly opened his eyes again, and fastened them on the space between her hands. “Still nothin’,” he said with disappointment.

  She sucked on her lower lip. I wonder. Aunt Jinny says doin’ a “spell” is jest making th’ Glory do what you want it to. So can I make it fix things so he can see it?

  Worth a try.

  She concentrated on the little orb of magic power between her hands, telling it fiercely that she wanted Josh to be able to see it the way she could. She didn’t have a particular glyph to write in the air to make it do that exact thing, so as she released the power in a shower of golden sparks, she wrote the one for “as I will it” between the two of them, keeping her intention firmly in mind—and hoping he might be able to see the glyph anyway.

  The sparkling motes of power gathered to form the glyph, which hung there between them for a moment, then burst like a firework.

  He blinked and stepped back a pace. “Did y’all see what I wrote?” she asked hopefully.

  “Wall, no,” he said cautiously, “but I shore felt somethin’ jest then.”

  She cupped her hands and gathered power for a second time, and the moment the little orb began to form, he jerked his head up and stared.

  “By gum!” he exclaimed. “I see it! Like a liddle ball o’ light!” He stared at the space between her hands as if he had never seen anything so fascinating in his life.

  Well, it is magic.

  “Can y’all see thet glow anywheres else?” she asked. “Y’all might not. Aunt Jinny cain’t. She says I got more of the magic than she do.”

  “Like where?” he asked.

  She released the power gently to go back to its source, and pointed to the tin
y rivulet of magic that was practically at her feet. “Thar, fer one.”

  He shook his head. “But I c’n see sorta—” his face twisted a little as he sought for words to describe what it was he was seeing, “—it’s kinda like a glowy dust over y’all. Lots on your hands,” he added. She looked down at her hands, and sure enough, they were still aglow with residual magic.

  “So y’all cain’t see it as good as me—” she began.

  “But at least I c’n see it a-tall!” he interrupted. “An’ now I know what t’look fer. Thet’ll do fer—wall, howdy, liddle feller—”

  She glanced down and saw one of the piskies at his feet. The piskie waved a twig-like arm at him, and scrambled up the leg of an empty stool to perch on the seat.

  “Huh. He do got thet glow ’bout him, like y’all said. What y’all call a critter like him?” he asked, looking up at her again.

  “Aunt Jinny calls it a piskie,” she replied, pleased that she was able to put a name to the critter for him.

  “Wall, yore welcome t’ watch me work, liddle piskie,” he told it gravely. “But there ain’t much t’see right now, I reckon.”

  He went back to work again, and the afternoon passed much too quickly for her liking, what with telling him what she knew about how magic worked, and the kinds of critters he was likely to see. She didn’t get into the Cherokee critters, nor the Cherokee magic. Partly, that was caution—she had no idea what the Holcrofts knew about the Cherokee living in the Holler. Partly, it was because she didn’t know if he’d be allowed to know about them, or about Cherokee magic. The Ravens might not cotton to that notion. And partly it was because she didn’t know if any of the Cherokee spirits would be inclined to show themselves to him, being as he was a white man with no connection to them. She wasn’t quite sure why she had been seeing the Little People even before she came here and met her aunt and the Ravens, but Josh didn’t describe anything like the Little People, so she elected to keep their existence to herself for now.

  She also didn’t tell him about Jolene.

  And that was just pure selfishness. If he knew Jolene—that is, the Jolene that the people of Ducktown clearly knew—she didn’t want him approaching the woman to ask about magic, which he might. He was friendly, and open, and honest, and she could give him no good reason why he shouldn’t ask Jolene about magic if he had the chance.

  And once he approached her, that was where the trouble might start. How could she ever compete with someone as beautiful as Jolene, if Jolene took an interest in him? And she surely, surely did not want Jolene taking an interest in him.

  Never get between Jolene and something she wants.

  So, best to leave Jolene out of this discussion altogether.

  Finally the westering sun told her that she was going to have to take her leave of him if she wanted to get back to the cabin without running afoul of her aunt. “I gotta go,” she said reluctantly.

  “Or yore aunt’ll hev a conniption, an’ y’all will be late for supper. Not in thet order,” he agreed, and put down his hammer and chisel again to turn and take her face in both of his dust-covered hands. “I meant what I done said, Anna May Jones. All of’t. Y’all’s th’ best thang t’come t’Lonesome Holler, ever, an’ I don’t intend t’let m’chance with y’all slip away.” And with that, he very gently kissed her on the lips, and quickly let her go. “Now y’all better skedaddle. I’m a-gonna go find Pa, an’ let him know what we’re a-thinkin’.”

  Then he turned her bedazzled self around by the shoulders, faced her toward the opening into the barn, and gave her a gentle push.

  She absolutely did not remember a single moment of the trip up to the cabin, because the next thing she knew, she was washing up at the well alongside her aunt. Thankfully, either Jinny hadn’t said anything, or she had somehow managed to respond intelligently, because her aunt said nothing until they were both sitting down to supper, with the light gilding the landscape outside the door.

  “Y’all seem a bit mazy,” her aunt remarked shrewdly, as she dished up soup and cornbread. “Anythin’ y’all see fit t’tell me?”

  She blinked, forced her head to clear, and took a deep breath. “Josh aim’s t’arst y’all fer leave t’court me,” she said, deciding to get it out all at once and have done with it.

  She waited for the storm. She knew exactly what her Ma would have said after such a revelation as that, and there would have been thunder and lightning. And as for Pa! Given how much he’d been against her coming here in the first place, she could well imagine the avalanche of disapproval.

  Or—on second thought, maybe her Pa would take such a thing as an opportunity to get her off his hands.

  Her aunt put down her spoon. “My land,” she said, which was a sight milder than Anna had expected. “That was a leap. Care t’tell me how this come about?”

  Relieved that there had not been an outburst of anger and opposition, she poured out the words. Exactly what had happened and, as near as she could remember, exactly what had been said. Her aunt listened patiently, with no sign of disapproval—in fact she continued eating through the whole recitation—until Anna finished.

  “So—how d’yall feel ’bout him?” she asked. “An’ I don’t mean all the stuff’n nonsense. I mean at bottom.”

  “Like we been friends always,” she said carefully. “Like I c’n count on him, an’ he can count on me. Like when trouble happens, we’ll both put shoulder t’ the wheel and git the cart back on th’road. Am I a-makin’ any sense?”

  “Better sense than I reckoned,” her aunt admitted. “S’pose I tell him yes, he c’n court y’all, but I ain’t lettin’ y’all marry till yore eighteen? ’Cause I ain’t. It’ll take y’all thet long, at least, t’ larn all I got to show y’all.”

  “Then that’s how it’ll be,” she agreed.

  “An’ what iffen I tol’ him no?”

  “Then I’d wear y’all down,” she replied, daring a bit of sauce. “Reckon I c’n be as stubborn as y’all, an’ I’m younger. I got time.”

  Aunt Jinny laughed softly. “Good. All right, then. When he comes up t’arst me proper, I’ll tell him it’ll be a long courtin’, but Jacob’ll git his Rachel in th’ end an’ he won’t have ter take no toad-faced Leah fust.”

  Anna actually leapt up from the table and kissed her aunt.

  “Oh, hush now,” Jinny said, snorting, but pleased. “It wouldn’t’a been so easy iffen I hadn’t known thet boy an’ his fambly since Hector was a pup. He’s a good young feller, an’ he ain’t a-gonna waste his life down a hole in th’ ground. And he’s got th’ Glory, which is kinder important, since y’all got it strong. Any man y’all married up with’d either have ter hev it his own self, or be easy with it like my Pa was with my Ma, or y’all have ter hide it from him. Most fellers don’ cotton to it when their woman’s got somethin’ powerful they ain’t got an’ cain’t hev. An’ thet hidin’ part ain’t easy.”

  “Y’all didn’t say give it up—” Anna ventured.

  “Thet’s on account of now that y’all’s got the way of it, the Glory’s got its hooks deep in y’all, an’ givin’ it up’d be like givin’ up a arm or a leg,” her aunt replied soberly. “Think on it a minnut. Y’all’ll know it’s truth.”

  She didn’t even have to think about it for a minute to know that her aunt was right. Giving up magic now was as unthinkable as having it had been before she came here.

  “Finish yore supper, he’p me clean up, an’ go do whate’er y’all’s gonna do afore y’all sleep,” Aunt Jinny told her, with a half smile. “Which, I reckon, is ter go hang out the winder up by y’all’s bed, stare at th’ moon, and daydream ’bout thet boy.”

  She was awfully glad that the deepening gloom of the cabin hid her blushes, because that was exactly what she most wanted to do.

  15

  THUNDER shocked her awake with a gasp and a pounding heart. Her e
yes flew open in time to catch the flash of lightning that turned the entire loft white, and another crash of thunder that occurred simultaneously. She shrieked before she could stop herself. Not that anyone could have heard her in that noise!

  She scrambled to the window to shut it when a gust of icy wind drove in, carrying with it stinging rain that pelted her face before she slammed the window shut. Then she sat on the floor beside the window, looking out at the glimpses of the garden offered by the lightning, waiting for her heart to stop pounding. This was the second huge storm that had come in the night since she moved here. How often did these things blow in, anyway? She just wasn’t used to weather like this.

  It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been storms back in Soddy . . . but they seemed so much bigger here.

  The garden—how was the garden going to fare? She thought of all the half-ripened vegetables out there with a stab of apprehension. The root vegetables would probably be all right, but what about the rest?

  She expected to hear a torrent of rain pounding on the roof just over her head, but despite the violence of the lightning and thunder, it appeared they weren’t going to be drowned any time soon, nor were they going to find the garden flattened. There was rain, she could see it in the lightning flashes, and hear it between the thunderclaps, but it wasn’t the sort of toad-strangler she had expected from the aerial violence outside.

  Downstairs she heard her aunt slamming the windows—and then slamming the door, which must have been blown open—shut against the storm. But her aunt didn’t call up to her to ask for her help with anything, so after a little, she went back to her bed. The thunder receded into the distance, and she slept again.

  She woke again, around the usual time, to realize that although the lightning and thunder had subsided somewhat, the rain certainly had not. It was still drumming on the roof overhead, which suggested that this storm was going to last the day.

  So we ain’t going out today, she thought with a moment of pleasure, which vanished when she realized that she had a lot of reasons to want to go out now.