Jolene chuckled, and smiled thinly. “There is no question of payment here. I am not interested in claiming such a payment from you. It is in my own self-interest to see that magicians within my orbit are properly trained, and you have a potential power that I fear your aunt is ill-suited to guide. I’d rather see you schooled and controlled than ill-taught and a hazard.”

Anna inwardly bristled at the implied insult to her aunt, but tried not to show it.

“But I wouldn’ want y’all to waste yore time—” Anna temporized.

“But it is my time to waste,” Jolene countered. “Besides, it won’t take long, at least this time. And again, I shall not ask you for anything in return. I will never ask for any sort of payment for teaching you. Among my other reasons, it amuses me to do so.”

“Yes’m,” Anna replied, now completely at a loss for any words at all.

Jolene waited for her to say something else, then finally crooked a finger at her, in a way that suggested Anna had better not refuse. Anna put the basket down in the grass of the lane and moved closer to the woman, reluctantly.

“I am going to show you how to do something very useful,” Jolene told her, as Anna looked into those startlingly green eyes and flawless face, and felt unfinished, awkward, and grubby. “I am going to show you how to find the magic of the earth, and draw it into yourself so that you can use it.”

“Yes’m,” Anna said, mesmerized by those eyes, which did not look at all human right now. “Thenkee, ma’am.”

“Thank me by learning quickly, before I grow bored,” Jolene replied. “Now—permit yourself to see the magic again—I’ll make sure not to blind you this time—and watch what I do.”

Slowly, and with patience Anna had not expected, Jolene showed her how to find all the sources of Glory, not growing on the earth, but under the earth: tiny rivulets that gathered the way rivulets of rain water gathered into thin trickles, then flowed into tiny streams, then joined into cricks and rivers. Soon she found she was able to see these things easily, and that there was a thick, rich river of the stuff flowing right down the center of the Holler and on to—well, she couldn’t see that far. “But don’t touch that, not yet,” Jolene cautioned. “You aren’t strong enough.”

And she showed Anna how to connect herself with some of those trickles and rivulets and draw them up into herself through her bare feet, until she stared at her own hands, half elated and half aghast, as they glowed with the power.

Could Aunt Jinny do this?

A’course she c’n. She puts th’ Glory inter things, it’s gotter come from somewhere.

“Now use that power—thus—” said Jolene, and pressed the tip of her index finger to the center of Anna’s forehead, bathing the inside of her skull in Glory—and making the incipient headache vanish.