“Miz Jinny, I swan, I could kiss y’all!” Josh burst out.

“Here now, ain’t no call fer thet,” she objected mildly. “An’ don’t fergit what y’all said at th’ beginnin’. Them things is gonna be purdy dear. So y’all’ll prolly know where t’ git ’em long afore y’all’s got the money t’ buy ’em.”

“It’s easier savin’ when I knows what I’m a-savin’ fer,” he pointed out.

Aunt Jinny just smiled very faintly and went back to her conversation with Josh’s father, which seemed to be about some small trades for butter and cheese.

They had been traveling for about an hour when the mule suddenly slowed down and began shaking her head. Matt slapped the reins on her back and made encouraging noises and she picked her pace back up to a brisk walk, but clearly was not happy about something up ahead of her.

“Ducktown Basin’s over thet ridge ahead,” Josh observed. “Mule c’n already smell it, and she don’t like it one bit.”

Anna had started out the day under her shield, so she wasn’t feeling sick, but she did detect a faint, unpleasant tinge to the air. And that was when she got an idea.

She put her finger to her lips to warn Josh to be quiet, then gathered the Glory to herself and with a push of her hands, sent it toward the poor mule. Drawing the four signs in the air that Aunt Jinny had taught her for this Work, as her aunt called such things, she set the same sort of shield on the mule as she had on herself.

But smaller. Focusing on the mule’s head, because she reckoned what bothered the beast the most was the poison in the air. And it wasn’t as if the mule was a fellow Earth Magician who would feel sickened by the poisons around her. She only needed to be shielded from what bothered her in the air.

As soon as she had completed her self-appointed task, her aunt turned slowly—and far too casually—to look at her. But the look she gave Anna was one of approval. Then she turned back to Matt Holcroft, and made some inquiries about his other children. The mule, meanwhile, gave a surprised snort in reaction to sudden liberation from the noxious smell.

The wagon topped the ridge—and Anna gasped at the devastation spread out in front of her.

For as far as the eye could see, the landscape consisted of bare red earth that looked as if it had been blasted by the hand of God. Naked mounds of clay, furrowed with erosion fissures, rose between gullies created by rain that had no vegetation to hold it. It was not entirely fair to say that nothing grew in this nightmare landscape—here and there a struggling tree or clump of bushes attempted to survive, and there were a few scattered patches of weeds, but all their leaves were yellow and burnt at the edges, the branches spindly and failing utterly to thrive, and not even insects were trying to make a meal of them.